An important part of designing games is understanding what games have already been designed. To this end, during the course of the semester, you will keep a Player Log to track the games you play and your responses to them.
The log itself will be maintained on a single tab named “Player Log” within a shared document on Google Drive.
You are expected to have one player log entry every three weeks for a total of five during the semester.
You have a lot of freedom to choose the games you play and write about. Counting them toward the course objectives requires meeting the following criteria:
Each game should be one you have not played before nor used for another course assignment. This will help you expand your design vocabulary.
At least half of your submitted player logs must be from tabletop games or digital implementations of tabletop games. These games reveal their design elements, which makes them ideal for budding designers to study.
You may include at most one single-player or solo game in your player log submissions.
I recommend Board Game Arena for playing digital adaptations of tabletop games online. If you are really not sure where to begin, consider one of the following recommendations.
Provide the name and designer or publisher of the game along with a canonical link to more information. Include the date that you played the game and the approximate duration of the play session.
Briefly describe the player experience, including images to provide context.
Write one or two paragraphs to track what you learned by playing the game. For example, you could describe a mechanism that you have never encountered before, or you might describe something that you think the game did exceptionally well. This is also a good opportunity to write about ideas from the game that you think would be fun to explore in your own designs.
©2025 Paul Gestwicki. This work is licensed via CC BY-SA 4.0.